Trigger warning: Short and pretty non-descriptive rape scene.
She is twelve when she realizes her weakness.
It is a Friday night and Bonnie's grandma has hosted another sleepover. For the first time the girls
have chosen MTV over the stories of monsters and the witches that fought them.
She is twelve and the boy is pretty, she thinks.
She knows she's supposed to call boys hot or handsome or cute, but the word which comes to mind is pretty.
She doesn't remember his name or what he sang but he was pretty.
She is fifteen when she kisses a cousin of Logan Fell in a closet at her first high school party. His tongue forces its way into her mouth and he tastes like cheap vodka and wine coolers. His angles are soft and there is a pimple on his cheek where her hand awkwardly lays. His brown hair is short and his lips thin.
He is not pretty enough, she thinks, at least not in her mind.
That doesn't stop it from hurting when he spits in her face and tells her he'd much rather have Elena, anyways, when she refuses to give him a hand job.
She is stupid.
She is sixteen when a boy from Memphis waits the table where her and her father sit uncomfortably.
He is pretty in the new way- shiny bicycles and unopened lipsticks.
She bathes in his flirty glances and lingering gazes, and her dad doesn't look up from his new slide phone long enough to notice.
His brown skin is somehow clear and his hair is braided into cornrows. She takes note of her father's disapproval right away. The boy is somewhere in between sharp and soft, and he asks more about her in passing than her father had the whole weekend.
She still tries desperately to get him to pay attention, still convinces herself they are close.
The boy's large hands slip a note into hers when he pretends to drop his pen, and she mutters something about going to the bathroom.
She gives her virginity to the pretty brown boy from Memphis in the back of her dad's sports car,
which Caroline hated (where are her mother's child care checks?), because he had admitted sheepishly that his mom had dropped him off, so he didn't have a car right now.
His lanky form pushes against the side, his legs curled uncomfortably, his stomach flab forming neat rolls. her dress gets stuck in the door when she slams it closed, and she rips it out angrily, not caring about the fabric remaining in the metal.
Her head bumps the ceiling every time she pushes up. They don't have a condom but she does not care. Let me get pregnant, she thinks, let me give birth to a mixed race child in Virginia. Maybe my mother will actually care about what I'm doing.
She refuses to cry out at the pain of having the boy fill her. She focuses on her hand gripping across his bare chest and his grunts that indicate he's doing the work, when he is just laying there.
She cleans herself up in the bathroom and wonders vaguely if that was how it's supposed to go.
Probably not.
Her father says she spent too much time fixing her hair, she should be more humble. That he and Steven were raising their daughter to be humble.
She is shallow.
She is almost seventeen when the football coach and history teacher shows interest in her. She is almost seventeen when he tells her she is smart and pretty. She is only sixteen when he slams into her against Tyler Lockwood's gym locker, and there are tears rolling down her cheeks. She hears her dress tear and this time she cares.
She says she doesn't want it but he merely laughs and tells her to stop lying. If she didn't want this, why did she let him compliment her and buy her flowers and dinner? Why did she let him kiss her in janitor's closets and empty classrooms?
She screams.
She shuts up when he clamps his hand over her mouth.
After that, he doesn't even look at her.
He looks at Elena, though.
She is useless.
She is seventeen when she meets Stefan Salvatore. He is pretty in the safe way- like sunlight pouring through trees and butterflies landing on flowers.
He chooses Elena.
She is not Elena.
She is seventeen when she meets Damon Salvatore. He is pretty in the dangerous way- like a knife gleaming with blood, or ivory teeth against her porcelain skin.
He makes her hurt and it is a pretty hurt; his open palm slapping against her bare ass and his fingernails scraping lightly against her back.
Then in an instant it is an ugly hurt; his demeanor mimicking her teacher's. It is his teeth tearing into her neck and his malicious voice forcing her to give up every little piece of herself.
He tells her she is stupid and useless and shallow.
He tries to kill her.
He chooses Elena.
She will never be Elena.
She is almost eighteen when she asks Matt Donovan to stay the night with her. He is pretty in the boy next door way- laughter ringing through the air and flashlights cutting through the trees behind their neighborhood.
This time she is the one who makes it ugly. She is the one who sinks her teeth into him.
He leaves her because she is jealous and even though she isn't, she lets him leave her because she's supposed to shut up.
He has already chosen Elena, anyways.
She should be eighteen when Tyler Lockwood kisses her.
She realizes he is pretty, wondering after her whole life how she had not seen it. He is like fall leaves being crushed by an onslaught from the football team. He is melting chocolate and clean sheets.
They love each other for a long time before things get distorted.
Before he distorts them.
Before that, though, it is epic. They are both so vulnerable, drowning in their identical fear of a future in which they are no longer human.
They are both so strong, in a world in which they are no longer human.
She loves him with everything, before he takes some of it. She loves him with everything but he only ever loved her with some.
In the end she is not enough for Tyler.
She is never the one.
She should be nearly nineteen when she meets Niklaus Mikaelson.
He is beautiful. He is like nothing she had ever known, and everything she would ever want to know.
He is art.
He is bad. She knows he is bad.
He comes into her life while Tyler and her are in love and he destroys the pretty boy she loved as easily as he would tear a canvas.
He wants Elena just like the rest of them, even if it wasn't to love her.
But he tells her she is strong and beautiful and full of light.
He enjoys her.
He gives her gifts and puts her onto paper in a way that makes her feel worth something.
This is all before she kisses him. He believes these things and does these things before she gives him what he wants, and she realizes it's not what he wants.
He promises her things and tells her Tyler Lockwood is not enough for her.
He makes her believe these things and for the first time in a long time she feels happy.
She lets herself love him for only five hours.
He makes her love the sound of tearing fabric.
He makes her love him.
She tells him she loves him, and it is whispered and hurried and desperate, and she does not know if he hears her, but it is enough.
In the end Klaus is too much for her.
She does not think she would ever be able to handle the hatred her friends, her family would have towards her if she lets herself have the life she wants.
She does not deserve him, anyways. She doesn't deserve the love he wants to give her.
She is shallow and she is useless and she is stupid.
In the beginning, she sends him away.
Pretty boys aren't her weakness anymore; they aren't beautiful.
They aren't art.
In the end, Klaus Mikaelson will return to her.
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